


for i have loved the stars too fondly (to be fearful of the night)

by qqueenofhades



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Light Angst, M/M, One Shot, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Romance, Soulmates for 1000 Years, That Time In Malta, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, soft immortal husbands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:21:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26149381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qqueenofhades/pseuds/qqueenofhades
Summary: Outside, Joe and Nicky collect their bags, help the woman to the taxi rank and make sure she’s on her way to wherever she’s staying, then go out to catch the bus. Valletta sparkles in the distance, this magnificent collection of fortresses and gardens and churches, domes and spires, museums and terraces, city walls and citadels, Benjamin Disraeli’s city of palaces for gentlemen. The place was largely built by the Knights Hospitaller after their exile from Rhodes and the Great Siege of Malta in 1565, and Joe and Nicky have watched it transform constantly over the centuries, but it has still managed to retain that unique spark of what they love about it. It is familiar, comforting, lovely. If the worldisgoing to end, no better place to be than here.(New Year's Eve, 1999, or: that time in Malta.)
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 54
Kudos: 497





	for i have loved the stars too fondly (to be fearful of the night)

**Valletta, Malta**

**December 15, 1999**

The customs line at Malta International Airport is long, maddeningly slow-moving, and the one guard stamping passports looks to be about ninety, as Joe shifts from foot to foot and tries to remind himself that they have nothing but time. (Unless, of course, the Y2K nuts are all correct and they’re two short weeks from the end of life as we know it, but if nothing else, living for almost a thousand years means that he has seen countless doomsday prophecies come and go without so much as a whimper.) It was a crappy flight from Paris – overbooked, understaffed, the inevitable screaming child two rows behind them and now determined to keep up the racket in the passport queue – and Joe’s trying not to look as stressed as he feels. This is their getaway for the holidays and the new year, the turn of the millennium, a huge and significant milestone for any number of reasons, and he’ll feel better once they’re out of here. Nobody’s at their best in the cattle corrals and fluorescent lights of border control, another reminder of how much things have changed over all the years they’ve been coming to Malta. The first time they were here in 1501, all they had to do was sail up, get off the boat, and pay a bribe to the port official. Joe votes they try that now.

The line shuffles forward another inch, the child behind them screams even louder, and as Joe is silently reciting the _Bismillah_ and reminding himself that the Almighty values patience, Nicky turns around. He sizes up the mother – tired-looking, hungry-eyed, apologetically trying to corral the fussy baby and a toddler of about three or four – and smiles gently. “Hello,” he says in English, then glances at her passport and sees that she’s Italian. _“Buona sera, signora,”_ he goes on, not missing a beat. _“Hai bisogna di aiuto con qualcosa?”_

The tired mother starts, her eyes welling with tears. Joe’s willing to bet that nobody has offered to help her for this entire trip, and has to smile softly to himself that of course Nicky has swooped out of the Maltese night like, well, a knight, her countryman in a time of crisis, to do exactly that. Joe is already feeling better just to watch Nicky be Nicky, as his lover takes hold of the baby, joggles him on his hip and tells him that he’s a handsome fellow and to stop screaming and to give his mama a break, as the mother tends to her toddler, gets herself sorted out, and thanks Nicky profusely in what sounds like Calabrian. Joe’s mostly able to pick out the specific regional accents, and he guesses that this woman is a migrant, one of the workers who travel around Europe in the growing season to pick fruit and vegetables in hot fields under hard bosses who only pay in cash and owe a cut to the Mafia. He takes out his wallet and quietly offers her all the Maltese lira they changed for back in France, and she shakes her head and tries to refuse. He insists – she looks somewhat surprised that he speaks Italian too, but not unduly – and while she won’t take it all, they manage to give her back her baby, some money, and reach the front of the line without actually noticing the rest of the wait. Joe hands over a French passport that reads _Joseph Jones._ Nicky hands over _Nicholas Smith._ The guard looks at them, asks a few questions in his quavering old-man voice, stamps the visa pages, and once more, they’re in.

Outside, Joe and Nicky collect their bags, help the woman to the taxi rank and make sure she’s on her way to wherever she’s staying, then go out to catch the bus. Valletta sparkles in the distance as they draw closer, this magnificent collection of fortresses and gardens and churches, domes and spires, palaces and piazzas, museums and terraces, city walls and citadels, Benjamin Disraeli’s city of palaces for gentlemen. The place was largely built by the Knights Hospitaller after their exile from Rhodes and the Great Siege of Malta in 1565, and Joe and Nicky have watched it transform over the centuries, but it has still managed to retain that unique spark of what they love about it. It is familiar, comforting, lovely. If the world _is_ going to end, no better place to be than here.

The bus stops in downtown, they thank the driver in fluent Maltese, and get off, hauling their bags and suitcases. The December evening is cool and misty, fog floating over the cobblestones like elegant wraiths, the streetlamps casting pools of golden glow that look like doorways to another world. They walk casually hand in hand to a corner store that is about to shut up shop for the evening, buy a quick dinner, and then continue up the street. Somewhat appropriately, they are staying in a rented house near St Sebastian’s Bastion, _Is-Sur ta’ San Bastjan,_ on the northeastern tip of the Valletta peninsula near Fort Saint Elmo. They know the elderly owner well, who has left the key in the postbox for them, and they unlock the door, ascend the narrow, creaky stairs to the top-floor garret, and find that a small Christmas tree and a plate of _imqaret_ have been left to welcome them. The windows open out over the city wall and the dark, glittering ocean. It is quiet, at last. Just the two of them.

“Finally,” Joe says. He picks up Nicky’s bags when he puts them down, and carries them into the dark bedroom, switching on the lights. They set down their convenience-store repast and eat, affectionately nudging each other’s knees under the too-small table. They’ll do more shopping tomorrow; they will be here at least until January (assuming, of course, no apocalypse). Joe smiles at Nicky, happy to be here, happy to be with him, happy to be sharing this small and unremarkable meal with a soft rain pattering on the steep slanted roof. When they’ve finished and tidied up, Joe murmurs, “Not too tired, are you?”

Nicky answers with a devilish quirk of his eyebrow, as if to say that of course neither of them were actually planning to go to sleep without celebrating their return appropriately. He wraps his arms around Joe’s waist, and they waltz into the bedroom, kicking the door shut behind them and drawing the curtains, sinking down on the amply-sized bed and undressing each other with slow and leisurely care. Even after a thousand, a hundred thousand times, it never fails to thrill. Their mouths meet in the dimness, their hands trace the well-loved lines of the other’s body, the faint scars and lines that never go away even through all the regenerations, the secret places, the curve of lips, the plane of shoulders and spines, the tensed tightness low on stomachs, the bend of a knee or the bone of an ankle. Joe pushes Nicky down beneath him, and Nicky arches his back, wrapping his legs around Joe’s waist. In quiet and tender and timeless communion, they find their way back home again, in each other and with each other, in touches and kisses and slow thrusts turning faster, and finally, sated, they sleep.

They wake in the morning with slants of winter sunlight filling the room, the high white ceilings, the gauzy curtains fluttering in the constant draft that they’ve never found, the way they’ve woken up in this room every few years since they first met the owner in 1973, and which makes Joe think poignantly, as he always does for just an instant, of their lost home in Constantinople. They get up and dress, then leave the house in search of breakfast. The stone of the buildings is pink and amber and gold and fawn, and the light has that particular early-morning quality where it seems to shine through sheets of bleached linen. The city is already awake and bustling, and Joe and Nicky make their way to their favorite café. They can sit overlooking the water and eat as much pastry and drink as much coffee as they like, and they make a good several hours of it. The sun comes up over the street, the palm trees rustle in the breeze, and a few tourists wander by with fancy Nikons around their necks, looking lost. One asks in English if they know where the Grandmaster’s Palace is, and Nicky is happy to point them in the right direction.

“You know,” he says, when they have finally finished breakfast and are wandering happily through the baroque streets, hands and shoulders brushing, “it’s 1999. This is our nine-hundredth anniversary, strictly speaking.”

Joe raises an eyebrow at him. “More like our eight hundredth,” he says playfully. “If we’re going from when we actually figured anything out.”

Nicky shrugs, grinning sheepishly, even as both of them fall contemplatively silent. 1099 is a long, long time ago by anybody’s measure. Joe thinks of himself, kneeling in prayer in the Tower of David, the dread whispers that the Franks were coming, the way he can remember parts and pieces and that first death bright as flame, but the rest of it has faded into the soft greyness of endlessly passing time. They did go to Jerusalem earlier this year, in July, since it seemed like the thing to do; there were a lot of First Crusade remembrances going on, some of which they wanted to be associated with and some of which they didn’t. There was a tweed-jacketed history professor who was deeply appreciative of the detailed account that Nicky was able to give on the breach of Jerusalem’s walls (he asked if he had published any articles on the subject, Nicky said hastily that he was just an enthusiastic amateur), and then there were some whackjobs who were trying to inflame religious tensions, as usual, and basically acting like it was a good thing that the heretics got what was coming to them. Lots of Americans with placards. Lots of Israeli secret service and bearded guys who were probably covert Hezbollah. Lots of people who all think they know exactly what the crusade’s legacy means, and which Joe and Nicky couldn’t help but regard warily. Everything seems twisted up these days, poised on the brink. That guy named bin Laden whose pals tried to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993, he’s been talking as usual. Death to the Western crusaders. So on and so forth. Thus far, nobody’s really listening outside the Middle East, but when you’ve seen this so many times, it’s harder to ignore.

Joe shakes himself, not wanting to think about this on their long-awaited getaway. They’ve been in Kosovo on and off this year, even if the last thing any of them really wanted was to go back into the Yugoslavian wars, and Andy and Booker are off to enjoy the last few weeks of the twentieth century elsewhere. Someone like Andy, the turn of a millennium is old hat, but even for as long as they’ve lived, this is Joe and Nicky’s first new set of a thousand years. _The Year Two Thousand._ Sounds appropriately science-fictiony. How, Joe thinks. How on _earth_ did Yusuf al-Kaysani from Cairo end up here.

That, however, is only incidental to his enjoyment of the rest of the day. They walk on the city walls, they go up to the Grand Harbor and take in the sea view, then to the Barrakka Gardens. Nicky gazes pensively on the monument of remembrance and out over the glittering blue water, as Joe sits down on a bench and watches him. He has always simply enjoyed looking at Nicky, watching him breathe, watching him be, watching the way he leans on the railing and shields his eyes against the sun with the casual, unconsciousness elegance that permeates everything he does. Whether the name is Yusuf al-Kaysani or Joseph Jones or anything else, it doesn’t matter. Even among all the change and clutter of the modern world, this adoration, this soul-deep delight, is the one thing that remains constant.

That is how the next several days pass. Joe and Nicky visit their usual old haunts in Valletta, eat well, make love, and catch up with the apartment’s owner, Ġużepp, who is now in his eighties, has known them for over twenty-five years, and never seen them age a day. He has never asked why. His wife died a long time ago and they never had children, and perhaps he sees them as sons, as a strange but welcome blessing for a lonely old man, two people who clearly love this place as much as he does. He asked them once when they first came here, and Joe wondered if they should just tell him that it was the sixteenth century. Somehow it seems as if Ġużepp might not be surprised.

A few days before Christmas, a storm blows in from the Atlantic just as dust blows in from North Africa, and the world turns grey and ocher and rust and wet, the windows sparkling as if stained in silver nitrate and the streets and domes and splendid churches of Valletta painted in watercolor impressionism on the blurry glass, anything or anyone outside the bedroom barely seeming to exist. Joe and Nicky spend the time productively, which is to say they have so much sex that they can barely walk. They twist into each other, explore and challenge and unstring and repair each other, touch and caress, kiss and lick and suck and fuck and mark their territory all over again, leaving no inch of flesh unexplored and no sinful act undone. “You know,” Nicky murmurs, eyes closed, smiling, sweat beading on his brow, hand stroking up the line of Joe’s spine as Joe nips at his neck. “We really are a pair of heretics, aren’t we.”

“Speak for yourself, Nicolò.” Joe leans down to steal another kiss from his lover’s bruised, teeth-marked lips. “Heretics according to who?”

Nicky hums, as if to say he is happy to get into a theological argument at a later date, but can’t be arsed to do so right now. Joe slides down next to him, sliding his hand across Nicky’s chest and stomach, curling lower, as Nicky whines and reflexively tries to pull back. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

Joe laughs, as he always does, pressing a kiss into Nicky’s shoulder and thinking – as he also always does – _Allah and all His angels forbid._ He has always secretly, shamefully prayed that if that terrible moment came, if one of them lost their immortality first, that it be him. He knows this condemns Nicky to live on without him, but he cannot face the prospect of doing it himself. Dying for good, even after this long, somehow seems easier. At least he’s done that before, often. Living without the other half of his soul, not so much.

The rain clears on Christmas Day, the light is fragile and golden and perfect as heaven, and they call Andy and Booker (Andy’s somewhere in Argentina, Booker is on a beach in Thailand) and wish each other happy holidays. Nicky mixes up a feast, Joe helps (if by that you mean stirring the occasional pot and taking full advantage of Nicky’s “Kiss the Cook” apron) and they open their door and visit with the neighbors who drop in to bring more pastries and Christmas wishes. Ġużepp turns up, they invite him to stay for supper so he won’t be alone, and after the token protests, he agrees. As he is insisting on doing the washing-up, he asks, “How long have you two known each other?”

Joe and Nicky glance at each other. They’re fairly sure that Ġużepp knows they’re a couple, even if they haven’t said so openly, just in case an old Maltese Roman Catholic would prefer to know it implicitly but not have it confirmed. Finally Nicky says, “A very long time.”

“I thought so, somehow.” The old man reaches for a dish towel. “You seem that way. Have you been happy here? All the times you’ve been to Malta, to my house?”

“We’ve been very happy,” Joe assures him. “This place has been special for – for many years. I am Arabic, Nicky is Italian, it is like it was made just for us.”

Ġużepp smiles. “Your families?” he asks. “They are happy with it?”

Joe thinks of his mother, far off and so very long ago, and how Maryam al-Katibi always wanted him to be a better man. How he forgot about time and its passing, and never saw her again after he left. It remains one of the greatest regrets of his life that she never met Nicolò, as he thinks that they would have liked each other very much. But as far as their family goes now –

“Yes,” he says, thinking of Andy and Booker. “Yes, they are.”

“I am glad,” Ġużepp says stoutly. “It is good for a man not to be alone.”

(It is, and both Joe and Nicky have clung to that, and they don’t know now that this is the last time they will see Ġużepp, as he will die before they return here in 2004 when Malta becomes a member of the EU, but on this sweet, poignant night, as time speeds on its passing, as they both reflect on all those many years, and God said that it was good.)

The last week of 1999 and the twentieth century and the second millennium count down to its inevitable end. There aren’t exactly prophets in sandwich boards shrieking on the streets about the end times, though it’s undeniable that there’s a sharp-edged anxiety as Y2K draws closer. On December 31, Joe and Nicky sit on the beach at the famous Blue Lagoon, watching the sun go down over the island of Comino, holding hands. At last Nicky says – half joking, but only half – “If the world does end tonight, I want you to know that you are still the best thing that ever happened to me. Except for that pastry the other day. That was really very divine.”

Joe laughs, takes his hand to his lips and kisses it. “Always, my heart,” he says. “Always.”

The world gets softer and darker, and lights come on over the bay and the archipelago and the boats bobbing at anchor, and Joe thinks that it must be the year 2000 somewhere else, and everything still seems to be fine. He wasn’t really worried, but he knows that fear that the next year might bring with it something too terrible to be gotten around, and that if you could just cling to this moment now when things are all right, they might stay that way forever. Finally he and Nicky get the water taxi back to Valletta, and it’s getting closer and closer to midnight, and they sit down on a bench and count down with the rest of this sliver of the world, all the way into the next stage of forever.

When it becomes plain that the world has _not_ ended, nor indeed does it seem likely to do so, everywhere seems to let out its breath at once. Huge and glorious fireworks thunder in the dark sky, in riots of color and noise and sound, and Joe and Nicky can hear cheering and toasting from what seems like every house in the city. They kiss and then kiss again for good measure, swept along on a tide of jolly and relieved and mildly (or well, considerably) inebriated strangers, an impromptu street party that both of them feel down to their nine-hundred-and-fifty-year-old sinews, the sort of magic that still catches them dead to rights even after so long in this beautiful, stupid, dangerous, exasperating, maddening, heartbreaking, filthy, glorious, transcendent, irreplaceable world. They throw their arms around each other’s necks and gaze deeply into the other’s eyes, as even all the gaiety and festivity and bacchanal falls into nothing, passing over them like waves. “I love you,” Joe says, as he has said it so many times in all the languages he knows. _“Ti amo.”_

Nicky smiles that smile that makes the world shine, and spins Joe lightly on the spot, and the next thousand years seem, just then, like the greatest blessing that any man has ever had. “I know.”


End file.
